A bipartisan border control bill published by the Senate over the weekend would provide $2.7 billion to jumpstart a new domestic, commercial uranium enrichment and fuel-making industry.
In a statement posted Sunday to the website X, Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the bill would not pass his chamber.
Aside from the infusion for commercial domestic uranium, the bill also includes nearly $150 for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) of which almost $144 million is “to respond to the situation in Ukraine and for related expenses,” according to the bill text. Some $5.5 million is for federal staffing that supports NNSA’s aid to Ukraine, which following Russia’s 2022 invasion has seen the areas surrounding some of its nuclear power plants become combat zones.
House Speaker Johnson’s grim pronouncement for the bill casts a pall over the two big uranium contracts for which the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy sought bids in November and June. Both contracts aim to foster the birth of an all-domestic industry to produce and distribute high assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).
DOE solicited bids for a HALEU enrichment contract in January. This is the larger of the two HALEU contracts the agency has put on the street and would, if maxed out, need all of the funding provided by the immigration bill the leader of the House has already spurned.
The enrichment contract would require a U.S.-based company to enrich uranium to the HALEU threshold of 19.75% uranium-235 by mass, but DOE left room for certain foreign countries to contribute.
In November, DOE solicited bids for a HALEU deconversion contract. The winner would turn HALEU supplied by the winners of the enrichment contract into a form suitable for powering nuclear reactors.
Bids for the enrichment contract are due March 22. DOE on Monday extended the deadline by two weeks. Bids for the deconversion contract are due Feb. 13.
